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Myth and Catastrophe. Characters and Landscape in Werner Herzog and Its Echoes in Latin American Cinema Mito Y Catástrofe

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Myth and Catastrophe. Characters and Landscape in Werner Herzog and Its Echoes in Latin American Cinema Mito Y Catástrofe Myth and catastrophe. Characters and landscape in Werner Herzog and its echoes in Latin American cinema Mito y catástrofe. Personajes y paisajes en Werner Herzog y su eco en el cine DAVID ANTONIO JURADO GONZÁLEZ1 latinoamericano https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9212-6847 The relationship between myth and catastrophe can help us understand Werner Herzog’s filmography. Taking as a reference this relationship, and analyzing character and lands- cape narratives, I will compare Herzog’s filmography with some contemporary Latin- American films to show that, even if these films resonate with the language of catastrophe of the German director, they objectivize catastrophe to the point of demystification. KEYWORDS: myth, catastrophe, Latin American cinema, film. La relación entre mito y catástrofe es útil para analizar la cinematografía de Werner Her- zog. Tomando como referencia esta relación, y focalizándose en el tratamiento narrativo dado a los personajes y a los paisajes, este artículo compara esta cinematografía con algunos ejemplos del cine latinoamericano contemporáneo. Se demuestra así que el cine latinoamericano que resuena con el tono de catástrofe del cine de Werner Herzog tiende más hacia la desmitificación que hacia el mito. PALABRAS CLAVE: cine, mito, catástrofe, cine latinoamericano. 1 Universidad Paris-Sorbonne, Francia. E-mail: [email protected] Submitted: 29/09/17. Accepted: 14/11/17. Published: 12/11/18. Comunicación y Sociedad, 32, may-august, 2018, pp. 41-61. 41 42 David Antonio Jurado González In this paper I will establish the relationship between Werner Herzog’s filmography and a selection of contemporary Latin American films. My main goal is not to know whether the German filmmaker has influenced Latin American filmmakers, but to analyze the relationship between the two. I will start by trying to understand a decisive subject in Herzog’s filmography: catastrophe and myth. I will then analyze the Latin American film examples that resonate with this subject, while paying special attention to two particular elements, character narrative treatment and landscape figurative treatment. WERNER HERZOG AND CATASTROPHISM Catastrophe has two facets in the filmography of the German director: catastrophe as a natural phenomenon, but also catastrophe as a civilizational phenomenon. Myth, as an archetypical narrative linked to a historical situation, episode or character, unifies these two facets. Nonetheless, there are some differences. Concerning nature, Werner Herzog confronts us with the immenseness of volcanoes and glaciers, inhuman and wild spaces, the sensation of danger and fear, the necessity of surviving and the astonishment of death. In La Soufrière (1977), for example, Herzog travels to Basse-Terre, a city that has been evacuated because of volcanic activity, and tries to find the people that refused to leave. He goes searching for the last man on Earth as if he were looking for the most authentic and conclusive sign of life. What appears to be at first glance an act of suicide is in fact, as reflected by the testimonies and the filmmaker’s experience, a singular and mythical vitality. According to Gabrea (1986), Herzog’s films contain mystical experiences that reestablish a mythical order of the world.2 2 Gabrea (1986) has emphasized the mystical dimension of Herzog’s films. According to him, the mystical experience is an essential part of the direc- tor’s filmography because it allows him to restore the lost bond between myth, or the society that believes in them, and the scientific skepticism, or postmodern society. Other examples where we can find this are: Fata morgana (1977), Ecos de un reino siniestro/Echoes from a sombre empire- Bokassa (1990), Alas de esperanza/Julianes sturz in den Dschungel (2000), Myth and catastrophe. Characters and landscape in Werner Herzog ... 43 As a civilizational phenomenon, catastrophe becomes historical. First of all, we must note that Werner Herzog belongs to a generation that brought “catastrophe” to the center of the public debate. According to Walter (2008), pessimism about the present was extremely prevalent in German society during the seventies and eighties, as if the nation indulged living in a neurotic atmosphere and believed in the pedagogy of catastrophe. During the eighties, German society was living in a kind of end of the world hysteria (p. 222). In this context, Herzog tried, as pointed out by Gabrea (1986), to rescue Western culture from urban pollution, industrial expansion, warfare, fascism and its consequences. Likewise, Carré (2008) observed that Herzog’s filmography reflects German debates from the eighties. According to the author, Herzog brought to light “the failure of Western civilization, visible in the representation of ecological and humanitarian catastrophes caused by Western intervention” (p. 193). Therefore, Carré establishes a connection between the films of Herzog and Adorno and Horkheimer’s3 criticism of Enlightenment. In response to the progress of Enlightenment or Aufklärung, a progress that leads to a servile, unconscious and even mythical belief in Western positivism, Herzog created emblematic narratives that predicted the failure of exclusive positive thinking. He aimed for the revival and vindication of a magical thinking. The German filmmaker tried in this manner to re-enchant a world submitted to a rational and scientific discourse, transforming it into a mythical and pre-modern El diamante blanco/The White diamond (2006) y largometrajes de ficción como Aguirre o la cólera de Dios/Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (1972), Cora- zón de cristal/Herz aus Glas (1976) o The wild blue yonder (2005). 3 An important precedent to understand Adorno and Horkheimer is Walter Benjamin. In Benjaminean thinking, catastrophe is synonymous of progress (Benjamin, 2002, P. 242). He opposes the teleological idea of progress to an ethics of rupture and resistance that hopes to find at the end of catastrophe the moment of redemption. Some critics have named this philosophy as “material messianism” (Richard Lane or Arno Münster). 44 David Antonio Jurado González world. “In filmmaking, Herzog said, I am hostile to History, I prefer to go back to cinematic dreams and maybe to a new Creation” (Carré, 2008, p. 223). Gabrea (1986) has effectively noted that Herzog’s films are an “enchanting ceremony” that raise the following questions: where do we come from?, who are we?, and where are we going? (p. 14). Herzog’s mythical narrative configurations are in constant dialog with the catastrophe of modernity. Representation here is a means to find and show the primary destruction, the one that concentrates all catastrophes, the archetype that will establish a collective ethos parallel to the idea of progress and positive reason. In this respect, Gabrea adds: “Ironic and pessimistic, the film director condemns humanity for its inability to preserve a balance between natural domination and exploitation. Though, he suggests that we still have the power to stop our fall into the abyss” (1986, p. 21). For example, the apocalyptic imaginary of Fata Morgana, Lessons of Darkness/Lektionen in Finsternis and The Wild Blue Yonder, is grounded in narratives coming from Christian and non Christian myths. But even in his most recent documentaries made with the help of members of the scientific community, such as El Diamante Blanco/ The White Diamond (2006), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) or Into the Inferno (2016), the intervention of the filmmaker and his particular way of storytelling replace the scientific world apprehension with a mythical one, that can effectively become a mystical experience. At the same time, in most of Herzog’s films, the stories rely on adventures that are the basis for mythical narratives, not just because these actions are considered limitless experiences, but also because of their uniqueness. I can cite here the biography of Kaspar Hauser, the life of the prophetic character of Herz aus Glas (1976) or the life experience of the only survivor of a plane crash in Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel (2000). Finally, I observed that the relationship between catastrophe and myth can be extended to the cultural field, mostly because of the importance of this relationship in Romanticism. While the 18th century tried to eliminate the authority of religion through reason, at a symbolic level the sublimation of catastrophe was an aesthetic compensation.4 In 4 From a kantian point of view, to sublimate a catastrophe through art means Myth and catastrophe. Characters and landscape in Werner Herzog ... 45 order to abstract things from their mere material being and to establish the existence of a totality beyond sensible objects, catastrophes were taken to a transcendental level. Likewise, since the seventies the postmodern discourse has claimed that it had dispelled the idea of Western development, but at the symbolic level, an artist such as Herzog compensated the loss of the idea of progress itself with a sublimation of the disasters produced by this conception of modernity. In order to do this, Herzog relies on a variety of narrative and figurative resources. Here I will limit myself to two: characters and landscape. These two elements are also the central points of our comparative analysis with Latin American cinema. The films that I have chosen for this comparison have been described as “cine mínimo” (Corro, 2012), “suspenseful narratives” (Schroeder, 2016), or “slow cinema” (Flanagan, 2008). This includes films with antiheroes, marginal characters, banal stories and cold atmospheres that play with time to accentuate the sensation of duration. As a result, these films call our attention on post-traumatic and memorial issues ( Page & Sánchez, 2012), social alienation, mortality and social anxiety (Jaffe, 2014) and on a claustrophobic form of capitalism/capitalistic system governed by high-frequency trading. (Luca & Barradas, 2016). Furthermore, like the movies of Herzog, the Latin American films analyzed here deal with limitless and catastrophic experiences, although they stay away from mythical narratives. Moreover, the critique on Western brutality disappears or is subordinated to local or national catastrophes.
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